Maybe Puppy on an NTFS partion? (Solved. See How To forum.)

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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Mr Doolie
Posts: 143
Joined: Tue 28 Jun 2005, 20:13

Maybe Puppy on an NTFS partion? (Solved. See How To forum.)

#1 Post by Mr Doolie »

I have to go off-Puppy-topic for just a minute. Please be kind to a noobee.

Look here:

http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Win_Partition

If I understand this right it shows how to install Knoppix on an NTFS partion without messing up your Winblows system except for ONE little text file change (boot.ini).

Is that right? Does this show how to boot up Linux fromm HDD without touching the MBR???? No Grub or LILO in the MBR?

***CAN THE PUPSTER DO THIS?*** [crosses fingers]

Yes, I know about the "No Touchie Da Windows" philosophy behind Puppy. I love it but if I DID want to "touchie" a little would this way work with Pup?
Do this thing with Pup, add the downloaded pup001 file and have an NTFS Puppy?


Maybe Puppy 1.05 can have this added to the Wizards.

Guest

#2 Post by Guest »

Without actually having tried this I can't comment on it.


But

I know if you have 2 partitions 1 for Nt4\Win2k\WinXP and one for linux it is possible to intsall grub to the linux partition run

assuming linux partition is /dev/hda2

#dd if=/dev/hda2 of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

copy bootsect.lnx to your Win partition

edit boot.ini

c:\bootsect.lnx="Linux"

Boot your machine, select Linux and then you are presented with the Grub menu, which you can add a entry to boot your windows partition and spend all day looping backwards and forwards between the boot menu.

This method also works if you have two hdd's installed..just substitute /dev/hda2 to where you installed the Grub bootsector...

I wonder if this would work if you made a dos program to copy the 512 bytes to where the bios loads the bootsector (07c0:0000 ?) then jumping to that location.

GuestToo
Puppy Master
Posts: 4083
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 18:11

#3 Post by GuestToo »

bladehunter's method is to install grub or lilo to the boot sector of a partition (which is not the mbr) and chain to it from Win XP's boot.ini ... this is as good a way as any

the method on the Knoppix wiki seems to be (i haven't tried it either) ... to run grub.exe, which is the grub bootloader ported to dos ... if you have Win 9x, grub.exe can be started from config.sys ... if you have Win NT/XP, grub.exe can be started from boot.ini

basically, you would copy the Puppy files to C: ... vmlinux, image.gz, and usr_cram.fs (poor man's install) ... you would copy the boot loader files to C: ... grub.exe and menu.lst ... you would edit config.sys to make a menu (1 - boot Windows 2 - run Grub)

it sounds like it should work

Guest

#4 Post by Guest »

Ok We all ready to feel pretty silly


http://www.goosee.com/puppy/wikka/Insta ... ppyInMsdos


From our very own wiki...hahahahahahaha

Mr Doolie
Posts: 143
Joined: Tue 28 Jun 2005, 20:13

DOS

#5 Post by Mr Doolie »

The key word being "DOS". I have a Win2000/NTFS system here.
Taint no way to boot that into a real DOS enviroment.

GuestToo
Puppy Master
Posts: 4083
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 18:11

#6 Post by GuestToo »

i think it should work with ntfs
see: http://grub4dos.sourceforge.net/
and Google for grldr

basically, i think you run grldr instead of ntldr, from a menu option you put in boot.ini

Puppy runs well from the live cd
it can be more convenient if it's installed on the hard drive ... most people probably only need a poor man's install (copy 3 files ... vmlinuz, image.gz, usr_cram.fs ... to the hard drive)

all you would need to boot Puppy (the 3 files) would be Grub4dos ... basically copy 2 files to the hard drive ... grldr and menu.lst (i'm not sure if you need grub.exe or if that is used only for Win 9x) ... edit boot.ini to add a menu item to run grldr

i have not done this myself (i have used other versions of Grub that have been ported to dos) ... but i think that's all you need to do

summary:
to install Puppy: copy 3 files
to install Grub: copy 2 files

drj
Posts: 41
Joined: Sun 26 Jun 2005, 17:45

usr_cram.fs

#7 Post by drj »

I ALMOST got it working on NTFS.

here is so far I went

1. installed wingrub206 (W2K + NTFS)
2. copied three files from puppy 1.0.3 to C:\
3. add menu.lst as follows:

--------------------------------------------
default 0
timeout 0

title Puppy-1.0.3
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/ram
initrd /image.gz
--------------------------------------------

4. boot machine and select Puppy
5. grub loaded vmlinuz
6. failed to located usr_cram.fs (looking for it from CD)

Questions:
a) any way to pass kernel parameter to specify usr_cram.fs when booting
b) Could we assume usr_cram.fs default location the same as vmlinuz/linux.gz?
c) we might have to put NTFS support into kernel, not as a module. It may be a good idea anyway.

unless someone (hello Barry...) shows me what to do soon, I will look deeper on this topic.

It would be really nice to just put three files on NTFS and boot Puppy. no partition needed and minimum messing around. Worthy looking into it

Guest

Re: usr_cram.fs

#8 Post by Guest »

got busybox (command line prompt),
mounted NTFS partition,
saw usr_cram.fs ,
losetup
mount -r -t squashfs /dev/loop0 /usr
xwin

WORKING !!!

a closer look at /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit, I think adding a few extra lines could make this working directly.

It would be nice to add this to official *iso release so that it would be accessible to everyone interested

drj wrote: unless someone (hello Barry...) shows me what to do soon, I will look deeper on this topic.

drj
Posts: 41
Joined: Sun 26 Jun 2005, 17:45

#9 Post by drj »

I guess I should remember to login first

:>

drj
Posts: 41
Joined: Sun 26 Jun 2005, 17:45

#10 Post by drj »

asking a favour

could someone who has developmental platform for Puppy 1.0.3 create a new image.gz file with ntfs support loaded?

should be something like

modprobe ntfs
mkinitrd /image 2.4.27

or just

mkinitrd -m ntfs /image 2.4.27

will have development platform for 1.0.4/VL5

Thanks a lot

Mr Doolie
Posts: 143
Joined: Tue 28 Jun 2005, 20:13

Sorta working for the time being

#11 Post by Mr Doolie »

Got Puppy running through WinGrub but had to put him on a FAT32 partition for the time being. After a LOT of trial and error it's working with hd(0,5) and hda5 as the grub parameters. Why is the second partition on my hard drive hda5? There are only two partitions: NTFS and FAT32. Why isn't it hda2?

Guest

#12 Post by Guest »

the mbr (the first sector on your hard drive, 512 bytes) has 4 numbers in a table ... each number is where a partition is on your hard drive

for your first hard drive, these would be hda1, hda2, hda3, hda4

there's only room for 4 partitions in the table

these partitions are called primary partitions, and can be ext2, ext3, reiserfs, vfat, etc etc

to have more than 4 partitions, you can make one of your partitions an extended partition

usually a typical machine with Windows installed will have 1 primary partition and 1 extended partition

the primary partition will be hda1 (or C:)

you can put as many logical partitions as you like in the extended partition ... primary partitions in the mbr table would be hda1, hda2, hda3, and hda4 ... you already have hda1 ... so the next partition would be hda5 ... so logical drives in the extended partition will be called hda5, hda6, hda7, etc etc

so if you have a typical Windows machine, it may have 1 primary partition only ... hda1 or C:

or it may have 1 primary partition and 1 or more logical drives (all in the extended partition) ... hda5, hda6, hda7 (D:, E:, F: etc etc)

though the drive letters may not match the hda numbers, if there are other hard drives or other logical drives like Linux partitions, which Windows can't see ... for example, if hda6 is an ext3 logical drive, Windows will ignore it so hda7 will now be called E: ... Windows drive letters can change on you ... Linux drive names shouldn't change even if you add or remove other (hardware) drives

short answer: your primary partitions are named hda1, hda2, hda3, hda4 ... your logical drives are named hda5, hda6, hda7

scsi drives are slightly different

Mr Doolie
Posts: 143
Joined: Tue 28 Jun 2005, 20:13

Thank you

#13 Post by Mr Doolie »

I see. Thank you.

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